Talking Heads Agree!

In short, Robert Reich and Pat Buchanan both agreed that some big banks should have been allowed to fail. When two such politically polar opposites agree on anything it has to be accepted that anyone with functioning brain cells should also agree with them.

So why did congress bail out the banks in the precise manner that they did? Why didn't they follow a Swedish style plan as recommended here on this blog? Why was congress better pleased to condemn the U.S. to a jobless recovery ala Japan (a.k.a. the "Ten Year Plan")? Why was the taxpayer of today, and of future generations also, asked to pay for this hideously undemocratic and anti-capitalistic bailout?

As my old pal, Cicero of Rome, once said: "Cui bono?" "To whose benefit?"

The 1% got floated their life rafts first. The rest of us can go straight to hell. But right, there is no such thing as class warfare. It just so happens that every branch of government in this country seems to only do things that benefit huge corporatist interests. It's not intentional; it's a mere accident of fate.

Below we have Elizabeth Warren schooling us on the way the federal government has utterly failed us. Believe what you like, what they didn't do was anything like the right thing because they didn't stop ANY OF THIS from happening variously through anti-trust proceedings, RICO, existing anti-monopoly laws, SEC regulation, etc. In fact, if anything, the federal government entirely caused this to happen by deregulating the financial and banking markets in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Ultimately, even Warren doesn't go far enough. she's wearing the kid gloves here. We have a completely corrupt collapse of our nation as we know it, and the throat of the American public has been symbolically placed into the psychopathic grip of financial Jack the Rippers that want to dismember the body politic.

Elizabeth Warren Explains It All

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So basically we have three models we can follow in the current economic crisis to save our failing and failed financial institutions: we can follow the FDR model and shut down insolvent entities, we can follow the Swedish model and temporarily takeover the entities we think we can restructure and save or we can follow Japan's lost decade model and subsidize and try to save nearly all of them.

Obama used to talk a lot about moral hazard but you can expect him to shut up pronto because he is clearly talking out of his ass while playing "bottom boy" for the banksters. Obama has allowed nearly 2 trillion dollars to be squandered between what the Fed has paid out and what the taxpayers are being forced to cough up for the likes of Goldman Sachs. Moral hazard, indeed...

So, we are absolutely following the Japanese model and making a huge motherfucking mistake too. Obama wants to simply re-inflate the bubble in the grand tradition of U.S. economic bubble and bust cycles. He's wrong and we are fools to allow it to continue.

More here:

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

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So Elizabeth does much talking because that's about all she can do. But yes, she is getting the word out and that's a hell of a lot more than what Obama is doing as bankster butt-boy.

But let's be clear about how very little oversight exists for the processes being undertaken right now in our names. It's a big fucking joke with the banksters laughing all the way to China, Japan, the Hamptons and Dubai.

We need to re-regulate the banks and undo what was wrought by Phil Gramm, Jim Leach and Bill Clinton when they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that was originally implemented by FDR. Why in the world would they have done that? Because there was money to be made, that's why. Pure, unadulterated greed. Same old story...

Here's a funny thought: maybe as a matter of national security we shouldn't allow foreign interests to control so large a part of our financial markets. If people understood that most of our debt is held by China and Japan I would think that there might be some tumult over that very fact. And why should that be the case, after all? We should manufacture and sell in the U.S. so that we owe less to the outside world. That's what everyone else is going to do - just you watch! Some might call it protectionist; I call it survival.

Charity starts at home. So does good sense.

We need to force Obama to actually fix the problem and not just re-inflate the endless cycle of bubble and bust to which we have all grown so appallingly accustomed. Enough is fucking enough! If you are as exhausted and disgusted by Obama's last three months as I am, it's time to force his hand. There is nothing we can't fix here by regulation, Obama.

Honore de Balzac said that, "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

Today that crime is called a "bailout" and TARP.